


In the Shadow of Mount Sikaram

by orchid314



Series: Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2018 [11]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Childbirth, Gen, Illnesses, John Watson in Afghanistan, Period Typical Attitudes, Prompt Fic, Second Anglo-Afghan War, Watson's Woes July Writing Prompts 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-16 15:14:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15439860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orchid314/pseuds/orchid314
Summary: There was a great heart that beat at the centre of things.





	In the Shadow of Mount Sikaram

**Author's Note:**

> Written for July Writing Prompts. Prompt 13: The Blank Page. Your prompt today isn't a prompt at all; it's a "free square" or empty page you can fill with anything you like.
> 
> As background, I referred to two narratives written by British officers who served in the Second Anglo-Afghan War: _Recollections of the Kabul Campaign, 1879 & 1880_ by Joshua Duke. And _Kandahar in 1879, Being the Diary of Major Le Messurier, R.E._ Both can be found on archive.org.
> 
> The childbirth episode, and in fact the entire story, are inspired by (read greatly indebted to) the short story collection _[A Young Doctor's Notebook](https://almabooks.com/product/a-young-doctors-notebook/)_ by one of my writing heroes, the magnificent Mikhail Bulgakov.

It was an idle Sunday morning, one whose sky burned a more translucent blue than it had for many Sundays past. The officers and men had ventured outside their tents to greet this tentative harbinger of spring, the air around them quiet. There was no wind to disturb them as they sat gathered peaceably together, each at his own occupation. They were writing letters home.

Murray was shining several pairs of boots. It was comforting to Watson to watch his orderly at the task. On slow days such as this, Murray would bring out his own boots and Watson's better pair (not the old knockabouts he was wearing now) and polish them to a high shine with the dubbin he bought or traded for whenever the regiment passed through a village of decent size. Murray, curiously agile despite his dark bulk. Cunning, industrious, loyal. A Northerner through and through. He had come to depend upon the man more than he would admit to him.

Watson turned his attention to Tyndall, his fellow medical officer, who was busy at his letter to his wife and who occasionally glanced up to toss a joking remark his way. To Pierce, a lieutenant who was new to the 5th but not to Afghanistan. To Harris, who wore a perpetual expression of disdain at finding himself in the unaccommodating conditions of an army camp wedged into the mountains between Kabul and the Khyber Pass. 

The little group sat not far from the river, the water tumbling over rocks and around stray driftwood as it made its way east. Behind them rose a line of hills that protected the camp from attack, while to the north, beyond the stream, a valley opened out before them, dotted with orchards and small farms. On the far horizon rose Mount Sikaram, still kitted out in snow. Majestic, imperial, unreachable.

Watson observed the scene, propped on one elbow, his legs stretched before him, ankle crossed over ankle in an economy of gesture, feeling the first blandness of spring on his skin. He sighed and reluctantly opened his bag with one hand, taking out his writing materials article by article. Within a few months of arriving in Afghanistan, he had gone through his entire supply of correspondents. He had sent his first letter to his brother, Harry, in care of the solicitor who had handled the settlement of their parents' estate, but a reply had never come. Watson knew beforehand that it wouldn't. Aunt Frances, his mother's eldest sister, had answered his jolly account of his arrival in Bombay and the journey north. But she was in frail health and could not be depended upon to write regularly, although he continued to send her little descriptions of life in this strange country from time to time. There had been a few letters to former university friends. And that was all. "Don't you have a sweetheart at home, Watson, to send you billets doux?" his fellow officers had teased him.

He made a face of dissatisfaction to himself and, halting, began to scratch across the page of his notebook. 

_The wind had got up and howling swirls of snow buffeted our bodies. It was difficult to see any considerable distance ahead on the mountain path–for it could scarcely be called a road at this point–and great rocks and boulders continually blocked our way. How many times did Murray and I and our guide dismount from our shivering horses, their heads lowered against the biting snow, to remove these stones, while the wind continued to whip around us? At least in such conditions we no longer had to worry about the depredations of the bandits and other marauders who hid in the caves along the route to the remote outpost that was our destination._

_When we at last arrived at the knot of dwellings that constituted the village of Ali Shir, we made immediately for Captain Bancroft's house, where we were led down into a curious subterranean room filled with woodsmoke. Even though the smoke hung thickly, it could not entirely mask the odour of sickbed. Pine torches were set about and the smoke immediately began to sting my eyes where the fine dust of the mountain winds had abraded the cornea. (We later learned that the tribes of this area believe smoke to have curative powers against disease.) In this room they had laid Bancroft, at present unconscious, on a makeshift bed. I knelt at the edge of it and my spirits fell at once. For I saw the doom resting in the blue shadows below his eyes and in the darker hollows of his cheeks. It does not take long experience in this profession to identify cholera. I have diagnosed it too many times during my training in London not to recognise its diabolical grip on a patient. Had we travelled these three days under such trying circumstances only to be welcomed by a man waiting at the precipice of death? I felt a twist of anger towards Bancroft for having brought us here to so little avail. Then I quickly wiped the thought from my mind as unworthy of one who aspired to be a doctor, disappointed with myself for having even entertained the notion, and set to work attending him._

_Bancroft's servants had wrapped the poor man in a large sheepskin, and Murray and I removed it, an overwhelming smell of diarrhoea assailing us as we did so. We cleaned him as well as we could, rubbing his extremities to bring warmth to them, and administered a first dose of calomel. One of the servants brought us cups made of gourd and fresh snow piled in a wooden bowl. It began to melt into water, and Murray gently held a cup of it to Bancroft's mouth, but the man did not move, his breath coming reedy and laboured. The servants asked if we wanted food, but I refused, leaning against the mud wall next to Murray's bed, my knees pulled up to my chest, my eyes closed, glad for a respite._

_Some indeterminate time passed when we were interrupted by a hubbub which proved to be two visitors. One was an old woman dressed in dark red robes, her face deeply lined. She was accompanied by an armed youth with a mulish expression. The old woman was insistent in her gesturing and pointing, and our guide, after some minutes and with great reluctance, told us that the woman's granddaughter was giving birth that very afternoon. The baby had moved into a dangerous breech position and the midwife who was attending the new mother feared to manipulate the child any further in utero. The grandmother had braved the elements to ask for help after learning of our presence there. The guide told us, with thinly concealed contempt, that it was not permitted for a man to witness a woman in labour, even her husband, and that for me to assist in the procedure would bring eternal shame not only on him but on the mother and her entire family. The old woman continued to harangue us all throughout this exchange, her eyes boring into me with the determination of a wild demon._

_Murray and I huddled to debate the matter in sharp whispers, he pointing out that it might be a trap to lure us away and murder us for whatever we carried on our persons. I told him that he should stay with Bancroft while I went to see about the baby. But Murray would not hear of my going alone. What if Bancroft were to die while we ventured back out into the storm, as they day descended into afternoon? Bancroft was an officer of the British Army. But how could I let a mother and child almost certainly perish? Murray argued how difficult breech births were and that there was no guarantee that either would survive, even with a doctor in attendance (indeed I had not yet performed such a birth, only having observed one at university, nor had I forceps on me and only a small quantity of chloroform). But would Bancroft even survive the night? Where did duty lie?_

_In the end, we set out for the old woman's. The storm had died down by then, so we had not that, at least, to contend with. The mother had been in labour for more than twelve hours already, they told me. There were several men gathered in a front room of the house and they and the guide and the grandmother conversed heatedly among themselves, casting suspicious looks at Murray and me every now and then as they spoke. One man in particular looked at us with resentful, haunted eyes and I thought that he must be the expectant father. More oaths and counterarguments came from the group, but the grandmother overrode all opinions with a fierceness that gladdened my heart, although I kept as neutral an expression as possible. It was agreed that Murray should remain outside with the men and that I should assist the midwife only as needed. "Savages," Murray said and he did not take care to mutter it under his breath._

_I entered the room that lay beyond where we stood, the grandmother following close at my heels, and approached the poor girl in the throes of labour. From what I could see of her face, she was utterly depleted of reserves. Her headscarf was drenched through with sweat and her light eyes were glazed. The midwife urged water on her, but each time she did so the girl arched away from her, moaning. The midwife lifted her skirts and I could see that one of the baby's feet had already emerged. We attempted to communicate with gestures that would have been comical had the situation not been so grave and between us somehow decided on a course of action. I washed my hands as thoroughly as I could, and doused chloroform on a square of lint, applying it to the mother's mouth. She resisted this too, tossing and whimpering, but soon enough fell silent. I feared that my forearms and hands would flap numbly from the exertion of lifting the boulders in our path that morning. It seemed impossible that the storm and Bancroft and the mother lying before me should all be compressed into a single day's span. I steadied my nerves as best I could, concentrating only on my hands and what they could tell me through touch. Then I reached beneath the mother's robes and up into the birth channel with one hand, encountering the legs that were lodged against the entrance to the uterus and the thick fluid that surrounded them. I searched for the umbilical cord to make sure it was not restricting the baby's neck. The pulse of it was feeble and I knew that we did not have much time. I placed my other hand on the woman's belly, guiding the baby's head downward as I pulled its feet through the narrow passage. Delicately, delicately, excruciatingly aware that a life depended on my absolute concentration at that moment. At last, I felt the head slip free into the space between the mother's legs. Was the child alive? I brought it up and out of its mother's skirts, the midwife and grandmother immediately taking it from my hands, talking quickly between themselves. I held my breath, thinking it had all been for naught. But as they bathed the child over a basin, it began to mewl and then gave a furious cry. I did not realise until that moment that I had been holding my own breath, and I turned away so that I could wash the blood from my arms but also so that the women should not see the relief that shuddered through me._

_Later, when Murray and I returned to keep vigil over Captain Bancroft, the man who had stared at us with haunted eyes appeared, carrying a pot wrapped in thick cloths. The old woman had sent us hot gruel and boiled eggs and a kind of pillowy flatbread for our dinner. Our guide and the servants set to eating their portions with an enviable heartiness, and we followed suit, as night finally fell. But although we were warmed by the food and the gesture of hospitality, I wanted to quit this strange place just as soon as Bancroft might recover consciousness._

Watson looked up to see a purple heron glide past, following the water's course, low and almost level with the men on the bank. He watched as it pursued its solitary way down the river until it was lost from sight. 

An image he could not write down. Of Bancroft. Bound in sheets and that awful sheepskin. The bundle strapped to the back of Murray's horse with strong rope. They had tried to secure the body as tightly as possible, but it nevertheless jogged along against the rump of the horse as they made their way, with their guide and the old woman's grandson, to a place distant enough from Ali Shir to safely bury a cholera victim. It was early winter still, so the ground would be soft enough to dig a resting place. As he brought up the rear of the party, Watson could not stop imagining Bancroft's eyes, their lids pressed close against the cloth of the shroud. Was there anything else he could have done for the man? No, he was almost sure of it. He had tried everything that was available to him. Unbidden, he wondered if Harry could have suffered a similar fate somewhere in England. Or abroad. Taking passage on a ship, perhaps, and ending up in a remote place such as this, in an unmarked grave, buried by a stranger. Would someone try their all for him? 

Watson lowered himself onto his back in the pale spring grass, stretching out his legs their full length and clasping his hands behind his head, closing his eyes as a light breeze feathered his moustache. What would it be like had his mother still been alive and he could write of these things to her? Would she have shrunk from them? These accounts he wrote were letters of a sort to her after all, even though she would never hold them in her hand. 

And what would his mother have made of him, on this adventure at the far side of the world? He felt himself on the very edge of it, bowing before the fate that had brought him here, just as the officers and men of the 5th Northumberland Fusiliers bowed to the orders of Lord Lytton in his grand perch in Calcutta. Just as the worn pebbles, the hawk's feather lodged in the crook of a tree branch, the secret roots buried in the soil of the valley below submitted to the looming majesty of the mountain that watched in the distance. There was a great heart that beat at the centre of things. Perhaps if you submitted to fate–no matter how odd or unexpected the experience reserved for you–you found yourself beating within that great heart, breathing in time with its systole and diastole. Watson had come near to it a few times in his life. Would he ever experience it in love (something more than glib affection for pretty girls), in a family of his own, as a doctor with his own practice and patients who needed him? 

"Sir." Watson's eyes blinked open. Murray's dark form stood above him, blocking the light of the sun. "One of the men is in the hospital tent. Reports a toothache, sir." Watson looked over at Tyndall. "I'll take this one," he told his colleague. 

_Quo fata vocant_. When had he turned melancholy philosopher? The philosophy of rotting teeth was much more reassuring. Watson shook off his thoughts as a horse shakes off the steam that hovers about its coat on a new autumn morning. He gathered his writing things and took the hand that Murray offered him, hauling himself up. Together the two men walked, the soles of their boots crunching across the rough stones at the river's edge. Watson hooked his satchel over his head and laid it against his hip. One hand he slipped into a pocket of his tunic and the other he rested against the rough canvas of his bag, tracing the outlines of the pens and pencils within, and the notebooks too. He fancied he could almost touch the words hidden there, as they leaned forward in their dark ink across the pages, restless to be released.

**Author's Note:**

> And with that, this series comes to an end. I didn't respond to every July Writing Prompt (not by a long shot), but I wrote more and discovered more about these characters than I thought possible when I first decided to do this on a whim.
> 
> I'll take up the Raffles plot in future stories, but felt it needed more space and time to do it justice. And I plan to explore Watson's time in Afghanistan in greater depth in the coming months. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who read, commented, bookmarked, or left kudos along the way.


End file.
